Farewell 2018

I jumped back into this blog last year (or possibly in the fall of 2017, prime example of me not doing my research. . .) because of a New Year’s resolution I had made.

Resolutions are funny, man. I make them every year but never, ever stick to them. It seems to me that I’ve made some kind of resolution ever since I knew what they were. So maybe since the age of 8 or so.

Here are my resolutions from last year:

Blossom [as a person. . . I’ve spent the last six or eight years repressing who I am instead of being who I am, to the point of actually losing who I am for a while.] I accomplished this to an extent now that I think back, but there is a long way to go.

Work from Home – Okay so. . . I haven’t nailed this one yet, but I’m quite close. More on that at another time.

Remove Negativity. . . both internally and externally. So, the fact of the matter is that this is never fully achieved, and that’s okay. It’s about minimizing this. I’m not where I want to be, but it’s better than when I made this resolution.

Truth. . . that’s all it said. What I meant by that was that I needed to focus on the true intentions of those around me and of myself. I have no idea where I am with this. Taking a note from JOB, I do, generally, stop and think before I speak on something of importance. Maybe that’s what this means all along.

Weight. Yeah, what I did was gain. I posted a while back about my efforts, which sadly fell away as we approached the holidays, but since December 26th, I’ve been making an effort.

Sugar Addiction. I think I forgot about this one entirely. The thing is that once I can make myself give up on sugar I do well, but as soon as I re-introduce it at all, I’m a full blown sugar addict again.

Smoking. I don’t want to, though. I mean I do, and I should, but I love it so much. Disgusting, I know.

Homesteading. Okay, okay, I did some of this too. It’s not like it’s just a switch you can flip, I suppose. There are a lot of obstacles to be dealt with here as well.

I had spent a few months prior to the New Year sorting out what I wanted my goals to be, mentally preparing myself for the changes that needed to be made, and focused a few Pinterest boards on these changes to get myself psyched. I’ll detail why the train wreck happened in a few paragraphs farther down.

It’s funny how we break our time lines down by year and measure what our time was worth that way. This is exactly why I have an issue with resolutions. We tend to set absurdly unrealistic goals for ourselves and then beat ourselves up when we don’t reach our goals. OR we don’t educate ourselves on how to accomplish said goal. It’s one thing to want something, it’s another to put forth the effort to see that through.

Yet, something inside me finds importance in reflection of the year and setting new goals. Some of that comes in how I was raised. I wouldn’t say that our family values were necessarily old-fashioned, but they were/are deeply rooted in tradition. (This is something that sticks to me like flies on shit, my friends – i.e. anyone that knows me knows I don’t handle change very well, et cetera.) Specially regarding New Year’s Day – my family has always eaten a fairly superstitious meal of Ham (for plenty), Cornbread (because it’s good, fool), Collard Greens (for green-backs), and Black Eyed Peas (for coppers). We’ll be having that meal tomorrow. Perhaps with Sweet Potato Pie, perhaps not. c’est la vie.

That all having been said, upon reflection of my previous resolutions, I believe I will keep the same list. I’ve made a lot more progress than I had anticipated and clearly my values have not changed.

Over the past week or so I’ve seen quite of bit of bologna on Instagram and Youtube of people whining about how 2018 was such a bad year. But you know what? Those same people thought 2017 was bad, 2016 was bad, and so forth. 2018 wasn’t good or bad it, just was. Here’s why I think that way:

I started out 2018 ready to conquer the world. This was going to be MY year – and it was for the first couple of weeks, and then, out of literally no-where my dude broke up with me. As he had several times before (another topic, I’m not complaining here, I know that I am the one who continually chooses to stay. . .) via text message, with no warning, while I was at work. Nobody takes break-ups well, but I take them to the next level of pathetic and it was extremely hard for me to deal with this. I completely shut down and gave up on everything, which is quite counter intuitive. Meanwhile, we still lived together. This happened the end of January and lasted into March. Then something happened and it was like he realized he’s an idiot and we were back together. This is an odd dynamic to explain because there is no clear point of when it happened and it’s not like we had a big sit down (other than me laying out my boundaries on if this were to ever happen again. Which I’m nervous even posting about for fear I’m putting that out into the Universe and it will happen again. Pathetic.) Now we are better than we ever have been. [WHAT?! Big Edit Here!!!! I absolutely cannot believe I failed to mention this part of January/February that had a significant impact on how I handled the rest of my year and really how I go forward. I got pulled over on New Year’s Eve, and this will be the cliche “dude was looking for an excuse” but hey, dude was looking for an excuse. It was 8:30 at night on New Years Eve on a snowy road back highway and he thought he was going to land a DUI. Joke’s on him. I don’t speed and I don’t drink, so he was just hoping. However, the real joke was on me. . . Unbeknownst to me, though that was purely negligent on my part, I had a suspended driver’s license that had been suspended for quite some time. To not get into too much boring detail, I thought I had taken care of the situation a few years prior, but I didn’t do my homework at the time and was still suspended. So I got a ticket that basically said “you can’t pay a fine, you gotta go to court, son.” So I went to court and sat there with a bunch of meth users and petty crime punk asses who argued with the judge and got sent to jail, but the compassionate judge that I had waited until everyone else had been dismissed and sat and had a one-on-one conversation with me. He heard my story and my reasoning and was sympathetic, even later stating he wouldn’t have given me any sentence at all if it weren’t for the statute that requires a minimum. So. . . he gave me the smallest possible fine he could, I believe it was $350, 6 months unsupervised probation (which ended July 25th and was super easy for me considering I don’t do bad stuff. I know, I know, I’m boring. . .) and 7 days in jail. :(. :(! That made my heart sink, but he was very kind and told me I could go to the jail and make arrangements with them to serve weekends. However, you can’t do time in less than a 48-hour period, so I had to do three days, two days, and two days. This happened on a Thursday so I chose to go in the very next night and stay through Monday and then do the next two weekends. It sucked, but I’m not saying that I was “innocent”. Learned my lesson though. I could write a whole post on those three weekends. . .] Then, in April I received two very good job offers, both of which I accepted. So I went from making a lot of money and moving back to my hometown to struggle, to having two well paying jobs. This is putting me back on my feet. Again, not quite there yet, but getting there. I hate and love both of these jobs and it is a tremendous struggle most of the time for me, but, until I get truly rolling on the work-from-home endeavor, that’ll do, pig. This summer I got to garden and really get my hands dirty with my homesteading goals. September came. On my sister’s birthday (also my best friend’s birthday) I had to put my little Gato dog down. It. Was. Devastating. I made the decision in that moment that I, personally, would never have another dog, as it was becoming something I was clearly not cut out for. My dude has a husky that he got about the time we got together so there is still a dog in my home. Scratch that. My best friend/boyfriend’s sister-in-law surprised my dude with a Treeing Walker Coon Hound puppy right before Thanksgiving. Christmas time came and I was actually able to give presents to those that I loved. It had been years since I was able to do so, and I know that’s not what Christmas is about, but being able to do so brought me so much joy. And now we’re here! So not the most impressive year. I didn’t make millions, loose 100 pounds, or win the Presidency, but I am content and satisfied. That is all that matters.

Someone once told me that whatever you are doing when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve is a reflection of what your year will bring to you. I’ve always taken that to heart and went out of my way to make sure that whatever the situation, I was surrounded by positivity (I just want you to know that this word is being flagged as misspelled, with no suggestion for fixing it. Am I crazy? I have I lost the ability to spell? I mean, I already have a hard time dealing with not putting two spaces after punctuation. . .) This year will be no different. My dude and I will be hosting a small gathering at our home. I’ll cook good food and we will play poker and enjoy everyone’s company.

I will leave you in 2018 with a playlist. It has no deeper meaning than these songs are making me feel my happy glow within today.

I hope you all have a happy and blessed New Year and you can look back on 2018 with satisfaction and an eagerness to top it in 2019!